We are writing
to express our deep concern about the arrest of the human rights defender Nguyễn Bắc Truyển and his incommunicado,
arbitrary, detention since the end of July 2017, and to request his immediate
and unconditional release.

Mr. Nguyễn Bắc
Truyển was last seen on July 30, 2017 while he was waiting for his wife near
his workplace at the Redemptorist Church in Ho Chi Minh City. Later that day, the website of the Ministry of
Public Security (MPS) announced that he had been arrested along with three
other human rights defenders and is alleged by the authorities to have violated
Article 70 of the Vietnam Penal Code, which concerns "acting to overthrow
the people’s government", allegedly in connection with the case of human
rights lawyer Nguyễn Văn Đài and his
assistant Lê Thu Hà, who have been
detained without trial since December 2015.

Nguyễn Bắc Truyển
is a Hoa Hao Buddhist born in 1968. He was the first entrepreneur in Vietnam to
voluntarily introduce social compliance and gender equality standards in his business
operations, which he did with his two companies in 2004. Police arrested him for the first time in 2006
and later sentenced him to three and a half years followed by two years of house
arrest on a charge of “propaganda against the state” under Article 88 of thePenal Code. The charge arose out of his
pro-democracy writing and activism.

After his
release in 2010 he participated in the Vietnamese Political and Religious Prisoners Friendship
Association, an organization which assists impecunious prisoners and their
families. As a legal expert he provided pro-bono legal assistance to families
of political prisoners, victims of land grabbing and persecuted religious
communities in Southern Vietnam. From 2014 until his most recent arrest he was
the coordinator of the assistance program for people rendered disabled by war of the Catholic Redemptorist Bureau for
Justice and Peace. Truyển was a 2011 recipient of the Hellman/Hammett award
from Human Rights Watch in recognition of his human rights work.

Mr. Truyển
married in 2013 and was living with his wife, Ms Bùi Thị Kim Phượng in
Dong Thap Province, where the two also advocated
for the rights of persecuted Hoa Hao Buddhists. On February 9, 2014 he was detained for one day and
expelled from their home. Days later, after receiving threats, Ms Bùi Thị Kim Phượng
also fled their home to join him in Ho Chi Minh City where they have been living since, unable to return
to Dong Thap.

The
circumstances of Mr. Truyển’s arrest remain
unclear. Nearly three weeks after his arrest, a note fromthe MPS dated August 14, 2017 and delivered four days later,
informed his family that he was being held at Detention Center B14 in Hanoi, 1600 km away
from Ho Chi Minh City. Since his arrest he has not been allowed any visit or contact with his wife and his lawyers. Officials at Detention Center B14
have repeatedly rejected Ms Bùi Thị Kim Phượng’s requests to visit him. The MPS Security
Investigation Bureau also denied his lawyer’s request to visit him on August
30, 2017. In the absence of any procedural
safeguards, we consider the arrest and detention of Mr. Truyển on July 30, 2017 to have beenarbitrary in contravention of Vietnam’s
international legal obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR) and according to the criteria adopted by the UN
Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

Since Mr. Truyển’s
arrest, we received
regular reports that MPS officials have continuouslyharrassed his friends and relatives. The police have summonsed several Hoa
Hao Buddhists for interrogation about their relationship with Mr. Truyển. Officials allegedly advised Mr. Truyen’s
friends not to offer any support to Bùi Thị Kim Phượng’s or to assist
her efforts to travel to Hanoi to provide him with food and medicine. While
she has been able to deliver food to Detention Center B14, the prison
administration has refused to provide her with any signed document from Mr. Truyển, attesting that he has
received the delivery. At the time of writing, officials have not even been allowed Mr. Truyen to call his wife by phone.

Vietnam is a
state party to the ICCPR and the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel,
Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), and is obligated to uphold
the rights of all persons deprived of their liberty, including the right to be
brought promptly before a judge and to access legal counsel, as well as to be
treated with humanity and dignity and not to be
subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment (other ill-treatment). These rights are being violated by the
continuing incommunicado detention of Mr. Truyển. In addition, any detained person has the right
to take proceedings to a judicial authority to challenge the lawfulness of his
or her detention through habeas corpus or similar proceedings.

Theprolonged
incommunicado detention of Nguyễn Bắc
Truyển, which has now lasted almost three months, constitutes a
violation of the prohibition on torture and other ill-treatment under ICCPR’s
Article 7 and CAT, as well as the ICCPR’s Article 10 which guarantees persons
deprived of their liberty the right to be treated with humanity and dignity. While
Vietnamese Criminal Procedure Code Article
58provides
for the suspension of the participation of legal counsel in cases involving
charges of infringing national security until the conclusion of the
investigation, this provision itself violates
the right of access to legal counsel under international human rights law and cannot be used to justify acts that constitute torture or other ill-treatment,
the prohibition of which is absolute.

In addition we
are concerned that in addition to the violations outlined above, Mr. Truyển’s detention
under Penal Code Article 79, is
itself a violation of a number of rights guaranteed
under the ICCPR, including under Article 9, which prohibits arbitrary
deprivation of liberty.

We are
similarly concerned that the arrest may have been undertaken in response to his
exercise of international protection rights as a human rights defender,
including those guaranteed under ICCPR Article 18, which provides for the right
to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; and Article 19, which provides
for freedom of expression. We recall
that under the UN Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals,
Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized
Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Declaration on Human Rights Defenders) Viet
Nam has a responsibility to protect and facilitate the work of human rights
defenders, not curtail it.

Mr. Truyển is a
human rights defender who has peacefully exercised his right to freedom of
expression to advocate for the rights of others, and has been detained solely
for his beliefs and the peaceful exercise of rights protected under
international human rights standards. We call on the government of Vietnam to
immediately and unconditionally release Nguyễn Bắc Truyển and all other persons
who are arbitrarily detained, and to cease harassment of his family, colleagues
and fellow activists.

Sincerely and respectfully yours,

Amnesty International

ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights

Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-Asia)

Boat People SOS

Christian Solidarity Worldwide

Civil Rights Defenders

Front Line Defenders

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Without Frontiers International

International Commission of Jurists

International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), within the
framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders

Stefanus Alliance International

VETO! Human Rights Defenders’ Network

Vietnam Committee on Human Rights

World Organization Against Torture (OMCT), within the framework
of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders